


Home We'll Go (Take My Hand)

by ExpressAndAdmirable



Series: The Heroes of Light [73]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Final Fantasy I
Genre: Blood and Injury, Epilogue, Gen, Healing, Tiefling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpressAndAdmirable/pseuds/ExpressAndAdmirable
Summary: Lux and Morgan begin to undo the damage done to the world, starting with a friend.





	Home We'll Go (Take My Hand)

They worked through the night. Cid, erstwhile king of the nation of Lefein, performed the majority of the surgery, painstakingly disassembling cybernetic implants and separating them from organs and flesh. Morgan assisted where she could and kept a watchful eye where she could not, providing an extra set of hands or passing her uncle the necessary tools when requested. Aviva followed behind, her magic healing the wounds the implants and prosthetics had left, knitting and rebuilding muscle, bone and skin. They worked, and she prayed.

In the weeks following the showdown with Chronodia, as the first whispers of peace began to spread across the world, Aviva searched for her missing kin. The Calling was no longer, Chronodia reformed into a being of learning and experience, but the damage had already been done; under her corrupting influence, nearly every living Tiefling had been subjected to augmentation of one form or another. Some had been so heavily modified into cybernetic monstrosities that their natural bodies barely existed. Worse still, their minds had been warped, their very psyches crushed and shattered by the madness of the Calling. But for Aviva and her mother, the Tieflings as a race no longer existed.

It was when they found Mae, wandering toward Crescent Lake with a metal arm and only the haziest recognition of people she once knew, that Aviva turned to Morgan with a theory. There had to be some way to help them, to liberate them from their automated prisons and rescue them from the mental void left by the Calling. What if, through a combination of Lefeinish know-how and raw elemental energy, they could restore the Tieflings, body and spirit? They had saved Esperance, the six of them. They had channelled their elements to affect reality itself. Could they not do the same on a smaller scale, one Tiefling at a time? Could they try?

They would need a facility equipped to handle delicate surgery. According to Cid, there was only one such facility still in existence: the medical bay of the Skybound Fortress, the very site of the Tieflings’ mutilation. There was something poetic in that reversal, Aviva told herself, trying to quell the unease that washed over her as she stepped inside the darkened room. The evil the chamber had witnessed could yet be cleansed. The horror the machines had inflicted could be healed. It could be used for good again.

“Okay,” said Morgan softly, wiping blood from her hands with a cloth. “Her body’s as complete as it’s going to be.”

Aviva nodded, exhausted, stroking Mae’s greying hair as she lay on the cold metal table. She had been able to restore Mae’s arm after the two Lefein had removed the cybernetic, though it was no longer tattooed. Something about seeing Mae’s bare, unmarked skin made Aviva smile. The artist would probably enjoy having a newly-blank canvas.

“Ready?” Morgan asked, resting her hand on Aviva’s shoulder and giving it a slight squeeze.

“Yeah.” The Tiefling nodded again, taking a deep breath and covering Morgan’s hand with her own. “Here goes nothing.”

Morgan closed her eyes, retreating deep within herself, and a moment later Aviva felt the blazing white energy of the spirit of Light extend into her mind. It was a feeling as comforting as it was strange, ancient and familiar as the beginning of the world. Closing her own eyes, she met the energy with her own, the two elements merging and amplifying one another, preparing for the task at hand. Together they focused on the Tiefling on the table.

Confusion. Pain. Yawning, keening emptiness. The pieces of the soul that had once been Mari Sanjna did not understand. They felt nothing, and everything. Why did it hurt? Why did the glory of Knowing bring only agony? Where had the Voice gone, that had shaken the foundations of the universe? Before, they had followed, exultant in servitude. They were lost now, aimless in the silence. They were reaching, weeping, yearning to be whole. They did not know how.

Flame and Light spread like liquid, awakening the dark corners of the damaged mind before them. They moved as one, an elemental consciousness, refitting the broken pieces and filling the cracks with warmth and love. Light revealed the truth at the Tiefling’s very core, the beauty of the person she once was. Flame wrapped itself around the ember of that truth, coaxing and nursing until it burned as bright as life. Pain remained, as pain would always remain; the elements knew it was not their place to erase the past. But the compassion, the desire, the wonder that made up her spirit would live again, repaired and guided by the strength of the Real.

“...Kid?”

Aviva blinked, shaking off the wave of dizziness as her eyes adjusted to the harsh light of the medical bay. A deeply disoriented Tiefling peered up at her from the table; pale and drawn, Mae looked as if she had had not slept in many months, but the black eyes that met Aviva’s were alert and attentive. 

“Hi Mae.” She took her old friend’s hand, smiling gently. “Welcome back.”

It would take time. It would take effort. It would be a long and difficult road. But one by one, they could save them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title song by Steve Aoki.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr at @expressandadmirable for a proper table of contents for the Heroes campaign, commissioned character art, text-based roleplay snippets and more!


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